I Remember Twyla

[October 8th, 2003] Twyla Tharp is big dance. For nearly 40 years, in more than 125 works, the choreographer has plucked the best from modern, ballet and even jazz with no apologies. Whether it's in movies (Hair and White Nights), for ballet companies or even for a flashy, Tony-winning Broadway show like her Movin' Out collaboration with Billy Joel, Tharp has left her mark.

But impressive résumé aside, what makes this woman's work such an appealing draw? WW spoke with a few of Portland's own creative types to get their personal take on the myth and magic of Twyla.

"Dapper jazzy ballet with an attitude," is how Performance Works Northwest's Linda Austin terms Tharp's work. "Athletic, driving movement," says fellow choreographer Mike Barber. But it's arts publicist Cynthia Kirk who may have pegged the populist appeal: "Tharp's the Christopher Walken of the choreographic world. I'll go see any film that he's in, and I'll watch any ballet she does."

Kirk's bizarre fan-love analogy is dead on. The often-cantankerous iconoclast has managed to build a legion of admirers by keeping audiences guessing, cranking out divergent blends of goofy sublimity, pure dance and prickly burrs of intelligence swathed in balletic grace--potholes included.

Tonight's four-work bill includes Westerly Round (2001), an overblown folk dance for a vivacious gal and three roughneck cowboys. It's a bit Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but, as usual, the link seems to be a sly reference rather than homage. If there's a pirouette, it's going to be triple. A leap? It must be sky-high--the movement as big as Americana itself. Later in Surfer at the River Styx, space-eating shadows traverse a night landscape brought to life by a cling-clanging score from Donald Knaack. Shifting from ballet to tribal to street hip-hop challenge, it embodies the stylish, pop-cultured sweat that some locals remember from successful James Canfield works--but creamier.

"I'm impressed at how she marries brilliant classical technique with a more laid-back contemporary style," says Oregon Ballet Theatre artistic director Christopher Stowell. "Both disciplines benefit, and no one apologizes for their heritage." Modern mover Gregg Bielemeier enjoys Tharp's earlier experimental works precisely because "the technique's there, but not. The dances were about movement exploration and virtuosity. That's what I like about her works, they--dare I say the 'E' word--entertain us."

Conduit co-head Mary Oslund was a student in 1975 when she worked with the choreographer at Ohio State University. She says Tharp would teach a single phrase of movement and then demand that work groups invert the phrase, retrograde it and make experiments. "It was so hands-on, the mechanics were right there in front of you," she remembers. "It was a blast."

Ultimately, perhaps, that is still the best way to take Tharp today: as a blast, a force that impels others to move, to create and to enjoy dance itself.